There are eight ways to practice the attribute of humility and each corresponds to a place on the body.

The third practice is with one’s forehead, as he writes:

A person’s forehead should display no harshness. Your face should reflect willingness, acceptance, pleasantry.

When I was a child a girl’s forehead was the place where you debated with your friends and mom, bangs or a center part. Then as my own daughters became teens, they spoke a lot about eyebrows. Unruly, uni-brow, bushy, plucked, waxed, thin line, severely arched, slightly curved, or groomed like Brooke Shields. Then, as the years passed, I somehow stopped looking at eyebrows started looking at hairlines. Receded or simply disappearing hairlines seem to have less judgment than comb-overs. And then there is always the question, is the thinness from illness or age.

But now, right now, I understand that the space above my eyes tells a story to the world. In the lines of your forehead is an expression of your spirit. Worried, concerned, deep in thought, content, angry.

This may sound silly, but try this – all day, while in conversation, at the computer, sitting quietly, while arguing, when being criticized or engaging, notice the space above your brow. Change it and see how it changes the dynamic of your day. What tales lay in the lines of your forehead. What is the expression of humility?

There are eight ways to practice the attribute of humility and each corresponds to a place on the body. (Moshe Cordovoro, Tamar Devorah)

The second practice is with one’s thoughts, as Cordovoro writes:

“Meditate and contemplate on thoughts of goodness, godliness, kindness.”

Once, in college, I took a class called “Speech and Diction.” My teacher was old (or so it seemed back then), very elegant, wearing a finely-made ladylike dress, always adorned with pearls, and lipstick perfectly shaping her words as she spoke. She spoke her syllables clearly and had perfect diction. I watched her and listened to the cadence of her lecture and was drawn into the possibility of elegant thought. Then one day she stood before us as if pronounce a great truth. Her small proper body stood center and all the rest was blurred background to her pronouncement. She said: elevate your thoughts. That’s it. Or at least that’s all that I remember. And I thought, really? We can control what we think? This phrase has hung in the air above my mind ever since. And from that day on I pay attention to the steady and… run on sentence of my thoughts and three or four times daily say to them, enough. Elevate your thoughts to the level of the person you want to be. Think love. Think patience. Think beyond judgment. Think about what you are thinking about. Our thoughts shape us, inspire us, urge us on, inform us, act upon our spirit overtly or surreptitiously. Humility touched the psalmist as he prayed for the acceptability of thought: May the meditations of my heart be acceptable to You, O God, my Rock and my Redeemer.

Moshe Cordovoro teaches in Tamar Devorah (The Palm Tree of Devorah) that to be in the image of God means to be humble, for through humility we learn and practice compassion. There are eight ways to practice the attribute of humility and each corresponds to a place on the body.

The first practice is with the head, as he writes:

Lower your gaze, a person who raises their head upward glorifies himself.

Today I set out to practice humility by lowering my gaze. I saw the ground beneath my feet and I felt each step. I noticed that upon the ground there were prints of the rabbits, the tracks of a bird, maybe a robin and probably a sparrow. I saw a blood worm finding her way back into the richness of the earth. I saw the dandelions and I thought, though they are weeds, today I see their beauty. And then dignified, off to the side, I saw the white petals of the daisy and I asked to no one in particular: does she love me, or does she not?  Then a buttercup plucked from the ground so that the bright yellow can be held under my chin and reflect beauty. All this meaning from a downward gaze. I took a breath as I started to look up and saw my shadow cast out before me. Isn’t it merely a dark outline of self that seems to run ahead, willy-nilly into the future, charting the way? I knew at that moment that I had a choice, to stay with the present gaze and behold the beauty of the earth, or to leap ahead, a bit too boldly, following shadows.

My son has a habit of always looking down. Lift your head Ilan, I would say. Meet the world with your head held high. But now I think he may be right to gaze downward. Maybe this is what the prophet Micah meant when he said… and walk humbly with your God.